d before she was permitted to see it. Nevertheless he had gone
to reside there, hunting a good deal and farming a little, making
himself popular in the district, and keeping up the good name of
Grantly in a successful way, till--alas,--it had seemed good to him
to throw those favouring eyes on poor Grace Crawley. His wife had now
been dead just two years, and he was still under thirty; no one could
deny it would be right that he should marry again. No one did deny
it. His father had hinted that he ought to do so, and had generously
whispered that if some little increase to the major's present income
were needed, he might possibly be able to do something. "What is the
good of keeping it?" the archdeacon had said in liberal after-dinner
warmth; "I only want it for your brother and yourself." The brother
was a clergyman.

And the major's mother had strongly advised him to marry again
without loss of time. "My dear Henry," she had said, "you'll never be
younger, and youth does go for something. As for dear little Edith,
being a girl, she is almost no impediment. Do you know those two
girls at Chaldicotes?"

"What, Mrs. Thorne's nieces?"

"No; they are not her nieces but her cousins. Emily Dunstable is very
handsome;--and as for money--!"

"But what about birth, mother?"

"One can't have everything, my dear."

"As far as I am concerned, I should like to have everything or
nothing," the major said, laughing. Now for him to think of Grace
Crawley after that,--of Grace Crawley who had no money, and no
particular birth, and not even beauty itself,--so at least Mrs
Grantly said,--who had not even enjoyed the ordinary education of
a lady, was too bad. Nothing had been wanting to Emily Dunstable's
education, and it was calculated that she would have at least twenty
thousand pounds on the day of her marriage.

The disappointment of the mother would be the more sore because
she had gone to work upon her little scheme with reference to Miss
Emily Dunstable, and had at first, as she thought, seen her way to
success,--to success in spite of the disparaging words which her son
had spoken to her. Mrs. Thorne's house at Chaldicotes,--or Dr. Thorne's
house as it should, perhaps, be more properly called, for Dr. Thorne
was the husband of Mrs. Thorne,--was in these days the pleasantest
house in Barsetshire. No one saw so much company as the Thornes, or
spent so much money in so pleasant a way. The great county families,
the Palliser